Flash Cache speeds access to data through intelligent caching of recently read user data and NetApp metadata in the storage controller. No setup or ongoing administration is needed, although you have the option to tune the operation of Flash Cache.

Technical Specifications

Specifications are provided by the manufacturer. Refer to the manufacturer for an explanation
of the print speed and other ratings.

General

Category of Accessory:

Storage accessories

Header

Compatibility:

PC

Manufacturer:

NetApp *Advertised*

Model:

Flash Cache, 256GB

Packaged Quantity:

1

Product Line:

NetApp

Miscellaneous

Compliant Standards:

RoHS 5/6

Product Type:

Cache accelerator

Product Reviews

Rated 4.4 out of 5 by 11reviewers.

Rated 4 out of 5 by Tsvetana Kostova Great performance for OLTP systems. Valuable Features:ADP (advanced drive partitioning), which eases capacity management on smaller capacity platforms. Great performance for OLTP systems.Improvements to My Organization:The Oracle workload, which was previously deployed on physical servers with direct-attached storage, has greatly improved mostly with transaction processing speed. Latency has been almost eliminated on protocol and physical disk layer.Room for Improvement:Mostly security-related bugs on various DATA ONTAP for c-DOT versions. No comments on the physical platform itself.Use of Solution:Since October 2015 (10 months).Deployment Issues:Configuring ADP seemed a bit more difficult than traditional aggregate setup.Previous Solutions:Most of our current solutions are based on spinning media and hybrid solutions. Due to the greater performance improvement on flash systems, the higher number of IOPS and less latency on the storage back end, I would recommend deploying performance-dependent workloads on SSD platforms.Initial Setup:The initial setup was straight-forward with the exception of the ADP aggregate setup and spare drive management.Implementation Team:Implemented in-house.Other Advice:Carefully estimate the IOPS profile of the workload that is going to be deployed on AFF as it is optimized for random I/O.Disclaimer: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: August 1, 2016

Rated 5 out of 5 by Reinoud Reynders We were very pleased with the average speed in the past, but it’s now consistent. The performance is consistent and that’s much more important than that it's faster. Valuable Features:For me it’s important that my flash system is a part of the NetApp storage system. It’s just an extension of it. My guys can use the same comments, the same tools, the same application integration as they did before. The VDI migration for example, my VDI guy doesn’t change anything. That’s a really good offer for us because then all the tools we can reuse all the integration. It’s just another disk wipe that’s there and that, for me, is the most important reason.Flash is, for us, a default for databases, VDI, and VMware. We still have some other disks which we bought two years ago, so we migrate step by step. The VDI was the nicest to start with because their benefits were the highest as we got unpredicted workloads for the VDI’s and that is very well handled by the flash.Improvements to My Organization:First, when you think of flash, everybody says that it’s faster, but that’s not the main reason. Of course it’s all related to it, but for example, with the VDI, we were very pleased with our previous disk system which also aligned with flash rules. But I was not pleased that my guys were spending a lot of time in managing their VDI’s, taking care of it, that they don't do the same thing at the same moment. When they were deploying, it was by 10, for example, not 300 at a time. They did that at night instead of during the day because they were generating a lot of iron on the disk system and the performance were going down.Honestly, we were very pleased with the average speed in the past. But it’s now consistent. The performance is consistent and that’s much more important than it being faster.They did a very good job already now with 8.3. If we also compare 8.2. to 8.3, there are a lot of performance improvements already there.Room for Improvement:It needs to be cheaper, as we want more but can't afford it.Use of Solution:We've used it since April or May.Stability Issues:In general with NetApp AFF, especially from version 8.1, it’s very stable, and with 8.2 I even can say that it will never die. That’s, for us as a hospital, very important because we’re always on, we don’t have maintenance windows, we don’t have time for big changes as we’re always on the fly, so updating for us is beyond us.Scalability Issues:That’s not a problem. It scales enormously well. We have more than six petabytes today. We have a lot of 8000’s in different guides with MetroCluster, and then because we’re already clustered from 2000’s, there’s 7-Mode systems that we now are migrating to the cluster.Technical Support:We always have tickets that takes longer than you expect, but I don’t see a difference with other companies. Sometimes it works very fast and then all is good and some of the issues take a little bit long for us. And also what I find very important is your critical tickets, are they handled perfectly?Previous Solutions:We tested another solution, but it didn't integrate well.Initial Setup:We're very knowledgable with NetApp, is the initial setup was very straightforward. If you're anew customer, the whole system comes complete pre-configured, so that's very, very simple. If you buy the pieces separately, then you have to configure it yourself, and if you're not knowledgable with NetApp, it's going to take some time to complete.Implementation Team:We do it in-house. We do it completely by ourselves because we like to do this. Also it’s important because we really want to understand it very well. How the system works in general and by doing the set up by yourselves it gives you already the knowledge of all traffic.Other Advice:Go with flash. We not have more free time because we can just press a button and deploy three of 500 VDI's at once. We don't have to invest in high-performance disks because we use flash.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. December 14, 2015

Rated 5 out of 5 by CoordinatorStgBkUp293 It’s a flash array that works seamlessly with other NetApp products. Valuable Features:* SnapMirror* Migration abilities* Easy backup solution* Snapshot abilityImprovements to My Organization:It's certainly better than our previous Pure Storage system. It’s a flash array that works seamlessly with other NetApp products. They have the ability of other FAS as well as of flash.Room for Improvement:In a metro cluster, the bridges are fiber heavy, limiting the performance. This is its only disadvantage.Use of Solution:We've used it for two months.Stability Issues:So far so good. We've had no stability issues.Scalability Issues:It's met our expectations, and we still have room to grow and scale out.Technical Support:7/10 due to having unsolved tickets.Over the last year, the quality of their technical support decreased, but it's getting better again.Previous Solutions:We previously used Pure Storage.Initial Setup:It's very easy. We've been using NetApp products for five years so its just another NetApp system for us.Implementation Team:We did it in-house.Other Advice:I would say if you need high availability across different sites, then think if the right product for you because of speed limitations.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 19, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by ICTManager672 Previously, we had to reprogram every three months or so, so not having to do that with AFF is huge. Scalability is difficult, as the number of shelves is limited to 2 or 4. Valuable Features:The most valuable feature for us completely depends on the workload. We've run it on various environments, including VMware. We were able to migrate to VMware with clustered Data ONTAP. That was important for us.Improvements to My Organization:Stability was something that was really wanted to improve on, and we've been ale to do that with AFF. Previously, we had to reprogram every three months or so, so not having to do that with AFF is huge.Secondly, we do a lot less daily maintenance than we used to. It's a fairly trouble-free system as we simply configure it and pretty much leave it alone.Room for Improvement:I had a few issues, but they were easy to fix. I would like for it to be more scalable as the number of shelves is limited.Use of Solution:We installed it in July.Scalability Issues:Scalability is difficult. The number of shelves is limited to 2 or 4, and the number of terrabytes we potentially have doesn't match to this limit.Technical Support:We don't have a lot of contact with technical support because our engineers handle any issues. But the product itself has been excellent.Initial Setup:The initial setup wasn't easy, and in fact took about 6 years. It was a slow start, but of course it was new back then, and it takes time.Implementation Team:We were one of the first and even the engineer had some trouble configuring it for us.Other Solutions Considered:We can't decide for ourselves so we ask the market, this is what we want to do, what should we buy? Then markers come with the products. There isn't a lot of choice.Other Advice:We've had a good experience with it so far. Right now, we're using it for our customers, but if we were to also use it for ourselves, it would be too small. I'm sure they'll improve in the future, but we'll just have to wait for the solution to support ten to fifteen thousand users.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 18, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by SWAutomationDev113 ?We use it for automating cloud deployments of SAP applications and products, but it has issues with deleting big data. Valuable Features:SnapMirror is definitely the most valuable feature for us. It allows us to have a snapshot in minutes and we can use it to restore quickly from a backup.Also, the speed of AFF is great.Improvements to My Organization:We use it for automating cloud deployments of SAP applications and products.Room for Improvement:They have issues with deleting big data.Use of Solution:We've been using it since September.Deployment Issues:We encountered no deployment issues.Stability Issues:It's generally stable.Scalability Issues:It scales to our needs.Technical Support:Technical support were helpful, but it took time to find the right person to help me. It started with a service rep in India, and was passed to three people until we found the right person with the correct knowledge. I give them a 7 out of 10.Previous Solutions:It's our first flash storage solution.Initial Setup:I wasn't involved, but those who were told me it was easy.Other Advice:Don’t implement if it's not needed because it’s quite expensive. We need it because of the demanding features.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 18, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by David Kloos It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime, although it would be great to combine all the software solutions together under a single GUI. Valuable Features:* Clustered Data ONTAP* Snapshot implementation for SAPImprovements to My Organization:It allows us to shrink the maintenance windows and downtime. It provides faster replications between systems because of the installed flash.Room for Improvement:ONTAP has a lot of features that are really great, so I don’t think there is something missing that I'd like to have.However, the best way to improve would be to have better management over the solutions globally (not a part of the software OnCommand, VFA, etc. installed). It would be great to combine all the software solutions together under a single GUI and people can just activate different features as they buy a license as apposed new installs each time.Use of Solution:We've been using it for four months in a multiple system environment with a lot of small writes. This was installed for an SAP HANA system as the persistency layer.Stability Issues:There has been no downtime yet -- perfect stability.Scalability Issues:It scales to our needs.Technical Support:10/10Previous Solutions:We didn't have anything similar in use previously.Initial Setup:It's a straightforward and easy setup. It was guided and we had the documents to install it. It took around two days of racking, stacking, and installation.Implementation Team:I did the implementation myself.Other Solutions Considered:We looked also looked at EF from NetApp and chose AFF because of the snapshot technology.Other Advice:It's definitely worth it if you need the speed.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 18, 2015

Rated 4 out of 5 by Maor Ben Aroosh The whole process of compilation, builds, and exports takes a lot less time. So instead of 10 builds per day, I can do three times as much. I would like better monitoring apps or software. Valuable Features:Clustered Data ONTAP 8.3b3 is valuable. Also, valuable is the easy migration between our old NetApp solution and this one. It was painless, as there was no downtime and we saw immediate results.Improvements to My Organization:Lower latency means faster end products. From development to the end, it now takes less time to compile a product and export it. The whole process of compilation, builds, and exports takes a lot less time. So instead of 10 builds per day, I can do three times as much.Room for Improvement:Knowledge base on the internet needs improvements so that I can find my own solution for stuff. I'd also like better monitoring apps or software.Use of Solution:We've been using it for about six months for low latency and critical loads.Stability Issues:10/10Scalability Issues:It's very scalable.Customer Service:8/10Technical Support:8/10Previous Solutions:Before this we were using 7-Mode and other NetApp FAS products. We upgraded for speed and newer features.Initial Setup:The initial setup was really easy. It took three days to set up once we got it.Implementation Team:We used a vendor team with in-house personnel. The vendor team were 9/10.ROI:8/10Other Solutions Considered:* HP 3PAR 7400* XtremIO* Nutanix* SimpliVityWe chose NetApp for a mix of reasons -- the price was great and also because we were working with NetApp before. It was really easy to migrate everything and keep everything using NetApp technology.Other Advice:It's good, but not perfect. If you are already working with NetApp, this is the very clear choice.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 17, 2015

Rated 5 out of 5 by Albrecht Lotter We're using only about one fifth of the formal capabilities of the systems. We're still running Oracle DW and 50% of the system is consumed, but this is not causing any issues during daily business. Valuable Features:The GUI that does the daily maintenance and system manager with SnapMirror and deduplication are very useful for us.We used the system manager for developed distribution.Also, the latencies are extremely low, below 0.5 milliseconds.Improvements to My Organization:I'd say we're using only about one fifth of the formal capabilities of the systems. We're still running Oracle DW and 50% of the system is consumed, but this is not causing any issues during daily business.We're also able to move volumes across aggregates.Use of Solution:We've used it for about three months for Oracle EW and VMware. We have it with 50TB flash and an SSD shell.Deployment Issues:We've had no problems with deployment.Stability Issues:It’s very, very stable, no issues at all. The primary system is flash, which is very responsive, with latency very low, below 1.5ms. We are early adopters of it.Scalability Issues:The scalability is excellent. We still can grow a lot into it and add more databases.Technical Support:The level of technical support depends on the ticket. It’s generally good, and sometimes excellent. Some cases are not as completed as I would like them to be. On average, it’s 7 out of 10.Previous Solutions:Previously, we used EMC.Initial Setup:Deployment was really very easy because we were somehow experienced with moving the system into other data centers. We went into a similar exercise about the end of last year where we moved into different areas of the data centers and have been running two data centers. We used Data Guard for Oracle workloads so the downtime was very low because we simply had to switch over during migration. The skill set was already there in the company. We almost did not need any system administrator. They provided the amounts for running NFS.Implementation Team:We got a partner to do the setup. Their knowledge was there and we had no issues.ROI:It's working as expected, but we didn't calculate an ROI.Other Solutions Considered:We did not, and when I joined, I proposed using NetApp and this was accepted.Other Advice:I would absolutely encourage everybody to implement such a system because it's really, really performing so good and latencies are just excellent. We're on the SSDs which have been productive for three months.Disclaimer: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions. November 17, 2015